Rushdie plays rough with Minogue sisters

I'm told that this unusual menage a trois is based around a shared love of. . .

Scrabble.

'Salman loves playing with Kylie and Dannii,' a friend of Rushdie's tells me at David Bailey's photography exhibition.

'He says the competition is rough, but that he wins because he plays "streetwise" Scrabble.

Nevertheless, Kylie is apparently demonic at it.' Rushdie had more pressing matters to concentrate his mind at Bailey's one-night show.

Eyebrows were raised when Rushdie escorted his ex-girlfriend, model Marie Helvin, rather than his current squeeze, Bollywood actress Padma Lakshmi.

'Salman and Marie were inseparable,' says one bystander.'They came together, spent the whole party together and then left together.' Helvin was guarded when asked the nature of her relationship with Rushdie.